Quotes About Vulnerability

If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.

Shutter all the windows, bar the door - Pain is what a house is for. Close your eyes when other eyes beseech, turn away from arms that reach. There is no commitment without cost - nothing is loved but can be lost. Better not to meet than have to part - there is no armor for the heart. But always light seeps in through cracks, and dust. No house is built that you can trust, So you may wake one day to find you care a little too much for a chair.

Lies from the closest to you are often the most numerous and paralyzing.

That if he were killed in the next few weeks, it would assuredly be near her. At her feet, in her bed. Inside of her. Unfortunately, that last thought just made him think that if he had to choose his final moments, being inside Charlotte would really be the way to go.

But it had always been that smile. Not her position as Henry Wilcox's possible wife nor the possibility that he could take his enemies down by manipulating her family. Those hadn't been the things that had driven him when it came to his feelings for her. It had been that smile. Through the shadows of the theater that first night. When their eyes had met. She had smiled. Simply. Warmly. Looking directly at him, unaware that she should be afraid.

He slowly smiled. 'Good. We'll start with the basics.' Her mind went blank. 'Basics?' 'Of kissing. Most people aren't good at kissing right from the start.' He looked her over. 'Unless you are a natural.' She blinked stupidly. His hand reached up and touched her cheek, gently tilting her head. 'It's like connecting puzzle pieces when you kiss. Or when you do anything else of a sexual nature.' The parts of her brain not already blank blessedly went dark.

most people would not trust a drunken prostitute like Daise. Would you have two weeks ago?' She blinked at him. 'I don't know.' She hadn't even thought about prostitutes, drunken or not, two weeks ago. 'That could be me on the corner were things different.' She swallowed. 'Or if they go differently, it still could. I would want someone to believe me.

My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen --- no retouching, no shadows, no flattery --- just stark me.

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.

The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.

You have the thing all men and women strive for: the lover from whom you do not have to hide anything.

Leaving the page of the book carelessly open,something unsaid, the phone off the hookand the love, whatever it was, an infection.

Meanwhile in my head, I'm undergoing open-heart surgery.

Talk to me about sadness. I talk about it too much in my own head but I never mind others talking about it either; I occasionally feel like I tremendously need others to talk about it as well.

And tonight our skin, our bones, that have survived our fathers, will meet, delicate in the hold, fastened together in an intricate lock. Then one of us will shout, "My need is more desperate!" and I will eat you slowly with kisses even though the killer in you has gotten out.

Yet love enters my blood like an I.V., dripping in its little white moments.

And I. I too. Quite collected at cocktail parties, meanwhile in my head I'm undergoing open-heart surgery.

Even without wars, life is dangerous.

Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark.

I fear I will be ripped open and found unsightly.

It is June. I am tired of being brave.

Somebody sees me, and I see myself through them. Then it's all gone, the whole world falls apart.

Each night I am nailed into place and forget who I am. Daddy? That's another kind of prison. It's not the prince at all, but my father drunkeningly bends over my bed, circling the abyss like a shark, my father thick upon me like some sleeping jellyfish. What voyage is this, little girl? This coming out of prison? God help - this life after death?

I am, to be sure, afraid that if you knew me that you wouldn't love me. But this must be faced…I fear it in any relationship. Thus I am perhaps afraid to reveal facts about things…or to say too much for fear if I make too much noise you'll drift away, pull down the shade of your ivory tower…and after that. Afraid, I guess, that I'll loose you…I keep losing people.